Random Bits

The last few days have been not quite a haze of jet lag, but I certainly know I've hopped time zones.

Germany was fantastic - I hope we go back!  I got to see the Victory Column (totally near the hotel - we were on that end of the Tiergarten) along with random men-killing-things statues (they used to hunt wild boar on the lands of the Tiergarten, so it really isn't a surprise). And the Deutches Technikmuseum (social event for the win with train cars!) and the Checkpoint Charlie museum - right at Checkpoint Charlie - the guardhouse is still there with taxis and buses whizzing by it.

Lots of things I didn't get a chance to see - like the Brandenburg Gates - they were on the opposite end of the Tiergarten from where we were and I just didn't have that much free time to try to go see them.  I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum instead.

I am gearing up to go on vacation - which is my next big ADVENTUR!  Hopefully a ton of relaxation and driving around the area dorking about small history bits with friends.  Low key.  And maybe there will be enough breezes to fly a kite or two.

I find as I get older I care less and less about what "people" think.  Introvert that I am people wear me out, but it used to be paired with social anxiety where I would push to do something even knowing I would maybe have a good time doing it, but would pay for it later with exhaustion because people tend to suck my energy dry (except for when I am on stage, where, oddly, the exchange works the other way).  I have less anxiety about saying no.  Maybe it is age.

Can it be called a "plot point" when discussing the upcoming season of a "celebrity"-based reality show?

I mean.  "Plot point" kinda makes you think "someone thought this up and crafted the story just-so" not hey, this event in my life is a "plot point" for this "season" of my actual life...

Still hating most of what is on television.  Enjoying exploring streaming netflix (through the Wii!) and getting introduced to all sorts of wonderful British TV dramas ("Cracker" and "Waking the Dead") and catching up on some movies I've missed.

So - I'll take recommendations of things to see!

I just watched the British move "From Time to Time" which is a family drama with supernatural overtones, and stars Dame Maggie Smith as the grandmother (basic plot - teenage boy sent to live with his estranged grandmother during WWII while his mother goes to London to seek information on his father who is MIA.  The family estate has secrets and ghosts.  The supernatural elements are well done).  Well crafted, and with understated elegance of storytelling - which the British do so well and the Americans generally have a difficult time doing at all.

Things I learned today:

* Mr Snuffleupagus has a first name - Aloysius.
* Holding four different conversations simultaneously via IM is difficult and crazy-making.
* That those four conversations were about the same work "bug" just coming at it from four different directions did not help.
* gwendolyngrace was a precocious child. Even stranger and more precocious than I realized (♥)
* My client announced four new leadership people that I will be working with closely for the next two years... Three of the four have no clue what they just let themselves in for.
* My aunt is on Facebook. This is my mother's sister. My mother doesn't do anything with a computer. At all. Ever. Apparently Aunt Kelly has no such issues. Mom has an iPhone which she makes and receives calls on, and is able to check the weather app, as well as snap a photograph. Other things are a bit beyond her (and she has no email anyway). It is the very first generation iPhone and is pretty creaky and slow.
* Martin Freeman is adorable and has no idea how wacktastic his fans are. Although in the next few days he is likely to get that point hammered home.

Periodically something brings home to me that while I am able to sing... I sing in a very limited kind of way.

Had a road trip last weekend and I popped "Big River" in the CD player... My range and Huck's ... well, pretty much the same. Yup. Teenage boy. *sigh*

On the plus side Huck's music in the musical is pretty damned awesome. "Waitin' for the Light to Shine" is both an awesome ballad *and* a rockin' hard driving song. "Worlds Apart" is probably the best non-lovers love duet I've heard. And "Leavings Not the Only Way to Go" rips your heart out. And in each and every one of them the part I can sing most comfortably and reach 95% of the correct notes? Huck's.

And yes, I can growl out "Guv'ment" along with John Goodman - but there isn't a ton of musicality needed for that.

One of the things I really wish I could do - and do really well - is sing. Oh well. Maybe in my next life.

So Taipei. It is humid. And rainy. And omg my hair is so tightly curled at the moment from the sheer humidity.

Tonight, one of the NOC guys who is also a Google Employee took a bunch of us up to the Google office in the Taipei 101 tower (73rd floor!). It was a dry run for Saturday when he is going to take a group of people up there for a meeting that he couldn't find any other space for. I so wanted to take a picture of the Google sign on the wall made from Rubik's Cubes - but I'd "signed" in and promised I wouldn't take any pictures. But I found this youtube video of it being created:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzTqABK4SzU

We marveled at the fun stuff - I played with this wall screen thing that gave dimensional views of places on earth via Google Maps, but also of the moon and Mars. I spent quite a bit of time following the paths of the Spirit rover on the surface of Mars. Come on, who DOESN'T want to wander the landscape of Mars?

The hotel is lovely - and I forgot that in most Asian countries they take Hospitality very very seriously. I have, not only shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and soap BUT also a loofah, shaving kit, emery board, toothbrush kit, shower cap, q-tips, and cotton swabs. Also I was provided the use of a robe and slippers, a bathroom scale, sewing kit, shoeshine kit, shoehorn, lint brush etc. etc. etc. So in other words, I could have forgotten ALL my toiletries and not needed to have purchased a thing.

(The view from my room is of the Taipei 101 building - which is pretty awesome!)

Breakfast is included in the hotel rate - and omg this breakfast buffet is ginourmous. European breakfast, Asian breakfast, American breakfast - whatever you want they have! I'm kind of fond of some of the hot offerings over at the Asian buffet - but you can be sure for the amount of time I am spending here I will get a chance to sample everything.

The convention center is full of Breast Cancer people - they're in until Saturday (and to tell you how distracted and tired I was today we wandered into the building straight into the breast cancer exhibits and I completely missed the two huge wall murals of boobs - I quipped that they come in pairs after they were pointed out (and wow, that they *needed* to be pointed out because BOOBS about fifteen feet high!) - so we don't have parts of our necessary space until Sunday - but reg opens on Sunday which means Sunday morning will be more fraught than usual trying to get set up and working before the hordes descend.

Well, I am exhausted - so I am going to head for bed - it is the end of my Thursday - even if most of you are just starting your Thursday...

Reality TV is particularly terrible. But I think it was said best this way:

"The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges."

Which, granted, it doesn't have as fine a ring to it written as it does spoken, where it was edged in sarcasm and gentle mocking.

But yeah. Reality TV.

So in the show I am currently in - that opens on Friday (eep!) - there are ten little girls (okay, so most of them not-so-little) playing the Orphans (yup - I'm in Annie - three long months of earworm songs that I won't even name for fear of setting the earworms to all of you).

And there are about three of them I am trying to tell apart from each other. Some are easier than others. Caitlin I've known since she was in the womb (quite literally), Little-Lauren is our Annie, Mid-sized Lauren is another orphan and another kid I've known for a couple of years (Big-Lauren is playing Grace. Yeah, three Laurens in one production!), Haley is playing Tessie (whose line is one of my action cues, so I memorized who she is, and what I was waiting for), Natalie is playing Molly - who has a tap solo (and probably the "cutest" of the kids - all silky hair and chubby cheeks with a smile that doesn't quit), Chloe is most talented and one of the SWEETEST people (plus she may not know this, but I know her cousins - they told me I was in a show with her), Thea is daughter to the director. It is Betsy, Mary, and Gabi I have trouble with. Today I discovered MARY IS THE BLONDE (and besides our strawberry blond Annie, and Natalie-also-Molly, whose hair is sort of golden brown, and Cailtin who is our only curly-haired girl - also sort of blondish, Mary is our only true BLONDE)- tall girl with stick-straight blond hair. Give her a few years and she will be supermodel gorgeous. She is at that awkward nearly-pubescent teenager stage, but her bone structure is stunning. She will never be "cute" but she will very soon be "beautiful."

Gabi must be the "other" brunette I can't place as any of the other girls(I think Gabi is the one who loves hats - she's always wearing one, and they are all different... I think), because Betsy, I discovered today, is the tomboy. I swear, this child is NOT a "Betsy" - she is sarcastic, and hard-edged (I can totally see her dying her hair crazy colors, and getting multiple face piercings).

I don't know. "Betsy" makes me think of someone who bakes cookies or is timid or shy (probably the literary "Betsys" I am thinking of that formed what my image of what a Betsy would be). The name does not conjure this sarcastic, eye-rolling kid who looks like she would rather be kicking the soccer ball around than singing and dancing on stage. I don't know. I don't even know if the Betsy is short for Elizabeth, but if so I could see her as a "Liz," or "Lizzie," possibly even "Beth" - but "Betsy" is still a little disconnected for me.

Is it because we nickname kids before they are fully-formed personalities? I mean, my niece G is so totally fitting with her nickname (which is basically lopping off the last four letters of her full name), and my niece B also fits her nickname, I think (which, oddly enough is just lopping of the first three letters of her full name). And my nephew, L, well, his name is already so short I'm not sure you can make it any shorter - by lopping letters off or not.

I know a Susan who hates to be called "Sue" but will answer to "Susie." My mom hated her first name so much she added an "e" to the end of it to make it better for her. And then there is my Aunt who was born "Eve" (or "Eva"?) but claimed "Kelly" as her real name. My grandfather's sister-in-law who was born "Fara" but much preferred to be called "Dolly." My great uncles who were "Jim" (really "Vincent"), "Al" (actually "Umberto"), and Dick (from "Dominic"). My grandfather was called "Jerry" but his real name was "Gennaro." Even my dad, who was named "Umberto" on his birth certificate has been "Albert" (unofficially - although come to think of it, since Albert is on his passport, I guess it is officially, although his birth record is still "Umberto") since he started school (his mother was told that he would fit in better if they used the anglicized version of his name - yeah, gotta love the 1930s).

Nicknames. Huh.

...somewhere one of my college boyfriends is cracking up laughing and has absolutely no clue why.

Ah, nostalgia hits us all in very strange and unexpected ways.

Or possibly just my level of geekery. Had to describe to a room full of people what a Mickey Finn was. A fair number of the people in the room were older than me.

I know this shouldn't surprise me, but it really really does. I mean, the under fourteen crowd you can kind of excuse from knowing that... but people my parent's age?

Does nobody watch old movies anymore?

So I woke up this morning in time to put my trash and recycling out - it was still dark. Then I went back to bed, because dark=night and night usually=sleep (but not always). So when I went out later, the trash and recycling trucks had been by to pick up my trash and recycling.

My recycling bin was not quite empty. It had a bit of "rejected" recycling, which is fine, if something is not recyclable, I am glad they are screening and rejecting items that don't fit. This is not what confuses me.

What confuses me is that the rejected bit of recycling? Is not something *I* recycled. I mean, my bin was full to the top - can't fit anything more in it (I still have a bag that did not fit that I'll have to add to the recycling in two weeks). So WHERE the heck did the reject come from? Was my bin just lonely for extra cardboard? Have they pegged me as the go-with-the-flow kind that will make the item recyclable and try again? I mean, all it needs is the plastic wrapping to be removed from the cardboard part, and BING! Recyclable!

Should I give all my neighbors the stink eye and teach them all how to recycle properly ("one of you doesn't know how to recycle! I am watching you!)? Is that another step on the long road to becoming the crazy cat lady, only with no cats as alas, I am allergic?

Yeah. I don't know. But it was something that made me go "huh?" when I went out earlier.